The invention relates to a method for loading and/or unloading a storage unit, in particular smoke trucks in which sausages are suspended by strings from sticks, and also to an apparatus for carrying out this method.
It is known that sausage and meat products are suspended on smoke sticks and loaded into smoke trucks. The sausage and meat products generally hang from these smoke sticks by strings, as a result of which a smoke stick has a weight of several kilograms. Since the workers employed to load smoke trucks are usually females, lifting such a load is a considerable burden on the workforce.
DD 221 978 A1 discloses a method and an apparatus for mechanical loading of shelves, in particular smoke trucks, in which, by using a vertical circular conveyor, the rods fitted with sausage or meat products are conveyed into the corresponding levels of the smoke truck. This is followed by the positioning in the smoke truck and by the rods being deposited in the receiver profiles. For this purpose, a loading elevator is provided from which the smoke sticks are transferred to a charging device. From the charging device, the sticks are then transferred into the smoke trucks. To transfer the sticks from the loading elevator to the charging device, additional transport rails must be provided which, by means of a coordinated lifting/pushing movement, take the rod received from the loading elevator and transport it farther onto the profiled receiving arms. This is complicated. Moreover, the transport rails have to be precisely synchronized.
DD 250 627 A3 in turn discloses an apparatus for unloading smoke trucks. Here, a smoke spit is held by a gripping device and transported to the point of transfer on the unloading unit. This unloading unit grips the smoke spit, while the other unloading unit releases the smoke spit. The second unloading unit is then turned and drops the smoke spit onto the conveyor roller so that sausages suspended on the smoke spit slide into the meat container standing on the roller. However, this does not achieve anything more than unstringing of the sausages from the smoke spit. The strings remaining on the sausages can be very awkward, especially in subsequent packaging in tubular casings.
The object of the present invention is to develop a method and an apparatus of the above-mentioned type which not only permits automatic loading and unloading of sausages from a storage unit, but also accelerates this procedure and makes the sausages ready for subsequent processing.